Mapping death in America, 1980 to 2014

Nationwide mortality data relies on death certificates, and when cause of death is unknown, sometimes “garbage codes” are used to fill the space on the form. This leads to unwanted noise, because garbage in, garbage out as the saying goes. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation tried to soften the noise and strengthen the signal. Ella Koeze for FiveThirtyEight mapped the results. Flip through causes and animate over time.